Talk:Community Relations/Strategy

Only technical?

Wikimedia Foundation goals welcoming technical contributors

As a CL i see my reach being more than just technical contributors. Someone giving feedback on how Maps are working might not be a technical person at all. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:01, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

We agree on the reasoning. I have edited that section to avoid confusion, is it better now? Anybody participating in technical projects is a technical contributor, editors included. When technical persons like developers are editing Wikimedia, they are editors just like anybody else. Symmetrically, when editors contribute to technical projects, they are technical contributors. Editors providing feedback to software projects but not considering themselves technical contributors would be equivalent to readers fixing typos in articles but not considering themselves editors.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:58, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Looks good! 107.138.50.50 14:17, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

how will you know?

Thanks for sharing this strategy, Quim and team! I'm wondering how you will know when you've made progress on your aspiration? As you do the important work of fostering an open community, make participation easy to discover, etc, what will success (or failure) look like? KLove (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

@KLove (WMF): that is a critical question, and the simple answer would be "Our KPIs will tell us!". Of course I'm cheating with this reply, but it has some truth in it: our strategy, annual plans, and quarterly goals will need to be connected, and ultimately the KPIs for our quarter and annual work should reflect whether we are succeeding in our strategy or not. Conversely, our performance in our short-mid term work might require us to review aspects of our strategy, and even perhaps our main aspiration.

On the specific point of how will we know whether we are becoming "the most attractive destination for volunteers..." There is no ranking, market share data or other corporate tools to look at, but I think we can rely on indicators such as the size and age of our volunteer developer community, the volume and quality of technical discussions with the participation of our wiki communities, the number of Community Wishlist tasks completed by volunteers, the activity in Wikimedia Labs... It will take a while to find the perfect indicators, but I think it is simpler to define basic indicators to show us whether we are in an overall good direction or not.

Currently we are focusing on finishing a first iteration in our strategy. Meanwhile, we are also redefining our KPIs in the context of the Annual Plan (phab:T124155). Hopefully the first versions of each will already have a decent connection. From that point, we can fine tune and improve.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

How we succeed? section additions

There are volunteering pathways, but I also think we need to identify the need for definitions of constructive discourse in order to be successful. That can be supported by an adopted CoC and an understanding of what is useful and not-useful feedback and collaboration. Noting that here dovetails nicely into our aspiration of

• fostering an open and welcoming community, making participation in Wikimedia technical projects a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone

Thoughts? -Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Playing field

I feel like it is different from "The Wikipedia Education Program network", these days. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:30, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Reviewing this page

• inviting Wikimedia readers and donors to contribute some of their time and skills

I don't think we're doing this or planning to. I am aware of other ongoing initiatives like the Swedish chapter one, but they aim at introducing Wikipedia and that's it.

• "Our main target groups" should really list tech translators more explicitly.

• We focus our support in the initial stages of these software development projects (Understand and Concept), and in their release.

This is great. How much is this happening though? Insights seems to confirm people have a lot of interest in these phases (Question 226 (TC43), but we (well, CLs) spend a lot on time on other phases as well, especially for very big projects.

• It wouldn't hurt to add Meta to the part about "our hub for documentation" (reflects the lot of work we do here).

• The geographical focus is probably to be re-evaluated. Do we want to wait for the Strategy to be over to update this and other areas that are likely to be affected?

• We also connect communities requesting new features with volunteers interested in developing them.

Something about the wording feels misleading, could probably be more precise (I mean, it may mean different things, so I don't want to force my interpretation over the others.)

• Recruit contributors to the development of the best educational content tools.

The "educational" bit may feel confusing?

• "We will invite Wikimedia chapters and other organized groups to get involved in our strategy, by expanding our campaigns to their regions, languages, and areas of specialization, and organizing local activities."

This entire bit is well positioned for the future maybe, but right now I dunno that we're doing that much (aside of offering support for their activities, such as organising a hackathon)?

• The bit at the end seems to be capturing our former KPIs?, and should probably be updated. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Strategy update discussion

Members of the TC team met to discuss the team strategy, now that we're about 18 months into its existence. Notes are here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/tc_strategy_2017

Key points:

• Overall, the team thinks the strategy has not changed in a significant way
• Overall, the team is okay with the strategy page
• The page needs updates to bring it into current WMF practices (remove PDP mentions, for example), remove jargon, provide nutshells and basic section summaries

Some of these updates have already been done, the rest can happen at any time. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)